Monday, November 15, 2010

Switzerland Day 6

Today was a great “middle” day for our big trip. We woke up to light rain, and had a yummy breakfast in Wilderswil. So we had a lazy morning, then made our way to the Woodworking museum and shoppe in Brienz.

We also took our time and did plenty of souvenir shopping too. Swiss flags, shirts, cow bells, etc.

In the Woodworking museums shoppe they had a wonderful display of beautiful cuckoo clocks. Dad was so generous and bought each of us one to hang in our homes to remind us of our journey. Mine is hanging as I write this here in my dining room. The kids love it and come running whenever the cuckoo makes an appearance. It has wonderful little pieces that remind me of Switzerland. . .a St. Bernard dog, one of the little water fountains that are all over, a wood stack, and of course the beautiful wood work on the home and the flower boxes with red flowers!

We stopped at a lovely restaurant in Oberrid, right on Lake Brienz. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned how beautiful the lakes are before yet, but take a look at the color of the lake in the backgroud of this picture! (The top picture has a better view of the lake, the bottom picture has a better view of US!)

It was always this fantastic ice blue color.

With internet access sketchy, it was hard to keep in touch with our families. Heidi and Julie went into a small town and were asking some teenagers where they could find internet access and all the kids could do was shake their head and say, “not here.” We finally ended up figuring out the “Swisscom” system, and were able to call home to our husbands and kids!

Dad had left his hat at the restaurant we had eaten at in Isletwald a couple of nights before so we stopped by to pick it up, then headed back to the Bed and Breakfast in Wilderswil for a nice night of games before we headed to the train station to pick up Todd!

One funny thing of the night. . .you all know how much we love games, so while shopping we bought a couple of Swiss games that looked fun. We struggled through the directions for a card game, but tried it out and it was making no sense (although we were laughing really hard). . .Heidi finally decided to try out her French and read through those directions. We finally realized that we had only read through 2 of the 4 pages of directions in English. Turns out it really was just a card game like “Nerts”. . .one we already love and know how to play well. That was a good belly laugh, eyes crying moment.

Here’s a few more photos I took around the Hotel/B&B. . .it was full of great antiques on every floor.Here’s a look at the “lift”. It really was just like a closet. . .you just pulled the door open and pushed the button.

This was a little kids play room they had on the first floor close to the dining room.

I had totally forgotten that game we bought. And how insistent I was that we play the Swiss way and not just assume it's like Nerts. Oh well, lots of laughs.

Btw, the small town Heidi and I went to is Thun which is a very big town. But even with our our laptop, wifi was nowhere to be found. Every younger person we asked knew exaclt what we were talking about just not where we could get it...